Quote:
Originally Posted by Racecrafter
I want to first say that I'm not arguing just pointing out the intent of the design. You state it was to cut costs. Have you seen the side pods on the XR? They are machined out of an Acetal derivative which is expensive. There are 3 holes per side plus the inner 2 on the front which are plenty enough to tune with. To be honest I don't care for the "look" either but that is how it was designed.
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It is indeed expensive - I know the price of that conversion isn't without reason. But the cost of a mould for two parts that size is considerable too. When you know that not everyone owning a TRF will even convert the car, machining is quite a sensible option I think: They could do it because they're expecting demand to be too limited to justify the production of a mould and/or this allows them to produce small batches without the need of much initial investment... so if the demand is higher than expected they can just machine another batch. I know Tamiya is a huge brand, but in these times no RC company will accept to lose money on any released model in their range - TRF included.
That said, I do appreciate the decision to go for machining from a quality perspective. With low production runs you can consider a cheap mould, lesser material quality or (too) short cycle times resulting in horrible parts... But on that front Tamiya always seem to make sure everything's well sorted!
